-You'll go beyond earth as the title implies, making it more like Alpha Centauri.- Out this Autumn- You start on an alien world- There are three types of worlds: Lush, Airy and Fungal- You'll still be building cities like in CIv V but to expand to other planets you'll use outposts.- You can be the first to explore a new planet and you may find some neutral creatures/races on those worlds. You can either destroy them or leave them be.- Relics are still in.- You can win the game by returning to earth. To do that you'll need to put a satellite in orbit around the earth and you can either return to earth to win or you can bring the refugees of earth to your home world.- You can use diplomacy with other players right from the start.- Fog of War is still present- There are now orbital units that you can command like satellites.

So, any thoughts?

I'm all for it, I really miss Alpha Centauri and this looks to be that and more.

I kind of hope they do more with combat, or at least revisit the concept of unit stacking in a limited and tactical way. Civ 4 could get a little out of hand with armies of units trying to move about.

Haven't been this excited for a new game in a long time. I am more concerned with them capturing the backstory of the factions like in Alpha Centauri than I am about how they do combat. Its been a long time since I played AC, but my strongest memories of it are the different factions and trying to deal with the land itself so you could grow. If they can capture that, this is a sure winner.

I hope there's some variant of the planet buster in this game. Some of my fondest memories from the original involved convincing the United Planet (or whatever it was called) to raise sea levels while I used planet busters to completely submerge the entire continent of my greatest and most dangerous enemy.

I actually just started playing Alpha Centauri again. Forgot how much fun it was, even for a 15 year old game.

I had a full size random map with all factions on the hardest difficulty, ended up allying myself with Sister Miriam of the Believers and together we took out the Hive and the Peacekeepers, both of us having probably the largest military of all factions. We were combining our forces against Colonel Santiago, which of course meant Sister Miriam was using my bases for her troops to launch attacks.. and out of nowhere, Sister Miriam launched a surprise attack on me while all her troops were inside my bases. I managed to beat the Spartan Federation back that she surrendered to me and ended up helping fight back the Believers. We slowly worked Miriam's forces back to her own bases and began launching attacks on her home turf.Then Morgan decides he wants to attack me from the South, while I'm still trying to work on Miriam to the West. Luckily Colonel Santiago was building a considerable military force and was able to help - and just as we began working our way into Miriam's territory.. the game locked up.Tried restarting from where I left off, and it locked up again.

Over 2 hours just to have it lockup! Maybe a Windows 8.1 issue, not sure.. but if Civilization Beyond Earth is anything like Alpha Centauri was, I plan on it being a day 1 purchase.

Logged

"A gladiator does not fear death. He embraces it. Caresses it. Fucks it. Every time he enters the arena, he slides his cock into the mouth of the beast."

I guess my real concern is with the game engine. I never did come to like Civ5, although I was a huge fan of Civ4. I'm wondering if this is going to be a problem for me with C:BE. I'm going to hope for a demo...

I guess my real concern is with the game engine. I never did come to like Civ5, although I was a huge fan of Civ4. I'm wondering if this is going to be a problem for me with C:BE. I'm going to hope for a demo...

Did you see the E3 walkthru? To me it looked exactly like Civ V with a scifi setting.

I wrote up a massive writeup on this week's Firaxis Livecast including a full list of all Virtues in the game. It took a fair bit of time so I've posted it on a bunch of forums. If folks think posting across forums is poor form, let me know. Alternatively if people like it. I've got writeups from last week's Livecast on the Purity, Harmony, and Supremacy affinities and the week before's Livecast on their new Structured Start which I can cross post here if people want me to. Apologies that the in game screenshot text is only kind-of readable. I'm not sure why, but Firaxis is not posting at full HD resolution, so that's how it comes out on both Twitch and on their Youtube versions of the Livecast :-(

Today's Livestream gaves us a short tour of a late-game Harmony-focused civilization since they didn't do that last week. They then went through the entire Virtue tree (although as far as I could tell they actually missed on of the Virtues).

If anyone is on the fence on the pre-order they did confirm that the pre-order bonus are actually mapscripts not hand-defined maps, so they will be reusable and random each time you play. They specifically mentioned one script which generates a world which does not rotate in relationship to its star so one side will be desert and the other will be arctic with a thin zone of more moderate climates.

The Livestream started late. The first 12:07 is just listening to Game Soundtrack, followed by the Trailer, which if you're following this thread, you've probably seen before. The actual discussion starts at 14:20 in. FWIW I went back and listened to the music while writing up this post and I thought it was very nice game music although YMMV.

Late-Game Harmony Affinity Game

Here's an overview shot of a Harmony city.

The massive thing to the left of the city in this next shot is the Mind Flower. It is necessary for the Harmony Affinity victory condition. It slowly absorbs the energy and consciousness of all people on the planet and when it finishes you win the game. It takes a very long time, but building Mind Stem city improvements will speed the Mind Flower's absorption rate.

Here are a bunch of Harmony units. They include both Harmony-unique units (which are the aliens) and Harmony-specialized units (soldier up top specialized/upgraded into a Marauder, and an artillery unit on the bottom upgraded into Harmony artillery). The alien creature on the right is an early /mid-game unit which requires 1 xenomass to build. The alien creature on the left is more advanced and is relatively cheap to build. It explodes on death causing 20 hp damage to anyone standing next to it.

They won't over some of the bonuses on the units. The soldier received the following upgrade bonuses -- I presume each of these are chosen from a list of two as we saw last week for the upgrade from Soldier to Marine, but they didn't say.

+15% when attacking [Soldier to Marine Upgrade]

20 hp damage on death (same as the Alien creature mentioned above) [Marine to Brawler Upgrade]

+30% when attacking or defending in Miasma [Brawler to Marauder Upgrade]

The artillery has the following upgrades:

No setup necessary before attacking

40% defense against ranged attacks

30% on bombarding cities

You can take advantage of properties like the Marauder's Miasma bonus by spreading Miasma. The satellite in this next shot is actually spreading Miasma:

Here's some more Harmony units. That top unit is a Harmony Evolved Xenos Cavalry unit. That massive thing on the left is a Xeno Titan and is the most powerful melee unit in the game. It takes 7 Xenomass [the Harmony-special resource] to build. It starts out with a melee attack of 96 but if you manage to get all the way up to level 18 Harmony you can upgrade it to 120 strength.

Virtue Tree

I've labelled the virtue tree:

Before going in to the actual virtues, many of the virtues refer to being Healthy. While health hasn't been fully described in any of the livecasts, from what they've said, health is a Empire-wide limiting factor which retards the growth of your empire if it gets too large.

Might Virtues

Tier 1

Adaptive Tactics - +50% XP from Combat.

Surivalism - +25% Melee and Ranged Strength against alien life forms.

Military Industrial Complex - +15% production on military units.

Public Security - +25% health bonus for every Military Unit under your command.

Liberation Army - After conquering an enemy outpost instead of becoming a derelict, it becomes your own. [They said that it takes 15-20 turns to turn an indefensible, unproductive outpost into a regular city.]

Tier 2

Scavenging - Earn 100% of an aline lifeform's strength as a science bonus after killing it and earn 30 Science from destroying alien nests.

Integrated Arms - +10% Production towards a Unit for each Upgrade it has. [Note these are the unit-class affinity upgrades not per-unit experience upgrades. Normally units get more expensive to build when they have been upgraded, this counteracts that.]

Networked Datalinks - -50% Science penalty from number of Cities for new Technologies.

Memeweb - 50% Culture penalty from number of Cities for new Virtues.

Community Medicine - +1 Health for every 8 Population in a City.

Tier 3

Metaresearch Methods - Leaf technologies cost 20% less Science. [CBE technologies are arranged with basic science technologies which are part of the main web, and then with multiple leaf technologies which the basic technologies unlock which provide practical applications of the corresponding basic technology, but which do not lead to other techs.]

There is one set of bonuses which you get for focusing on one tree. You earn the first when you have five virtues in one tree. They didn't say what triggered the second and third, but I assume it's when you have ten and fifteen virtues unlocked. Note these bonuses might be a bit off, my notes are a bit jumbled on this, since this wasn't covered all at once, it was scattered throughout the discussion on the above Virtues. And some of them were either missing or I missed them.

A separate set of bonuses trigger if you spread your virtues across multiple trees.

Synergy Breadth Bonus

Tier 1 - Currently triggered by having six Tier 1 virtues (although they said the actual number might change) so in other words, all five in one tree plus one from another tree would trigger this bonus. The actual bonus is a Free Virtue. So this is currently get a Virtue in another tree for Free.

Tier 2 - I believe this is triggered by having six Tier 2 virtues. If so this one is much harder than the last one, which is pretty much of a no-brainer (and is thus not a very interesting mechanic), since you will have to do some investement in a second tree to get up to tier two. This one unlocks a second Virtue for free and also give you a free covert agent.

Tier 3 - Requires 10 Tier 3 Virtues. Gives +10% Growth in Every City, +10% Production in Every City, +10% Science in Every City, +10% Culture in Every City, +10% Energy in Every City

Technology Discussion

While this week's livecast was originally billed early game virtues and early game technologies, they went super in depth on the virtues and didn't spend much time on the techs at all. 1 hour and 5 minutes into the livecast they finished up on the virtues and showed us some techs in the context of a game. Here they show a city location that is surrounded by some great strategic resources, but that is going to be a problem because the terrain provides a poor place to grow food.

The solution is to finish the Organics Tech. This gives access to the Mass Digester, which allows +1 Energy from Tundra and 4 Grower Specialist slots (which are presumably a new specialist type that generates food without having to work a tile). There is a corresponding tech and building which will make desert tiles much more useful too.

They then showed the main tech tree and some filtering. Here's the central area of the tree (you can see from the minimap in the top-left that it's showing most of the tree). It's somewhat readable. As always apologies for the poor text, I don't know why they don't Livecast in full HD.

And here it is filtered for Supremacy-related techs:

They talked a little about some of the techs.

Tactical Robotics- this tech gives access to the CNDR unit which is a Supremecy Unique unit.

Power Systems- +1 Production from Mine Improvements- +1 Energy from Geothermal Well Improvements

Autonomous Systems

Weather Control which gives access to Weather Control (see tech web filter screenshot above for description)

Ydejin, thank you for the excellent information you provided. This is one of my most anticipated games, and based upon what you posted it looks like things are moving along nicely. I can't wait to dig into this one!

Great review! I'm holding off for a sale simply because my backlog can't take any more. Really looks good though, if I hadn't already bought Legend of Grimrock 2 I probably would have taken the plunge. From the reviews and impressions I've seen, including TB's and several others, it looks like there are lots of people out there that are pissed because this isn't the Alpha Centauri 2 they expected. For some reason that just bugs me. Why can't people appreciate a game for what it is, not for what they want it to be? If they don't like it that's fine of course, but it would be nice if it was the game itself and not "It is not Alpha Centauri, so I hate it." I played ALOT of that game back in the day, it was indeed great but I think most of these people have their rose-colored glasses on.

I played for an hour last night, and for me, it's not so much that it isn't AC, it's that it really does feel like Civ V with a different wrapper. That's not to say it isn't good, but it does have a mod feel to it for me.

I spent most of my time and effort dealing with aliens. I pissed them off, not by attacking them, but I let some earth plant life become invasive. I have no idea if that's the real reason, but they were leaving my units alone, and then within a few turns there was just tons of alien units all over the place and they started attacking. It made it very interesting and fun.

I had a weird bug where I couldn't click and hold the right mouse button to move. Loaded up Civ V to test my mouse, then back to BE, and it was gone.

I am really hoping to find some time to play it tonight, school papers be damned for one night.

From the reviews and impressions I've seen, including TB's and several others, it looks like there are lots of people out there that are pissed because this isn't the Alpha Centauri 2 they expected. For some reason that just bugs me. Why can't people appreciate a game for what it is, not for what they want it to be? If they don't like it that's fine of course, but it would be nice if it was the game itself and not "It is not Alpha Centauri, so I hate it." I played ALOT of that game back in the day, it was indeed great but I think most of these people have their rose-colored glasses on.

For me, itís because there are a lot of CIV games but there has only been one Alpha Centauri. As someone who has gone back and played AC recently, I would agree that the interface has started to show its age but it still has features and unique gameplay elements that have yet to be surpassed in any CIV game.

AC was also filled with personality and even had a compelling story that was integrated with the gameplay, something the rest of the CIV series has never even attempted. AC made me feel like I was interacting with other global powers, each with their own personalities and quirks. When you finally got to place your arch nemesis in the Punishment Sphere and watch them writhe in agony there was a great feeling of evil joy. I have never felt like I was playing with anything other than computer AIís in any of the CIV games, and as such, never found them anywhere near as compelling.

Oh don't get me wrong, I LOVED Alpha Centauri. I just don't remember it being the "holy grail" of strategy gaming some people have described it as. Of course that's just my own personal preference. I never had the same experience as you with the previous Civ games and always felt like I was playing against the Russians or Japanese, etc. I didn't need a story made up by the developers, I felt like I was creating my own different stories with each game I played.

I don't think it's a great game, but it is quite fun. My problem is I am struggling to find the info I need with the changes from Civ V. For instance the tech tree has so much info and choices, it's a struggle to see what I need to research next. For instance my health is low, but finding techs that can help me is tedious. Also all these new resources, I can't tell what improvements can be made until I move a worker onto of them or stumble through the civopedia, which really could use some cleaning up. Less backstory and more hard info with links on related game concepts would be nice.

The game feels like it needs more work, like it needs to be hashed out a bit more. I am really looking forward to an expansion already, which is odd for a game that just came out.

I don't think it's a great game, but it is quite fun. My problem is I am struggling to find the info I need with the changes from Civ V. For instance the tech tree has so much info and choices, it's a struggle to see what I need to research next. For instance my health is low, but finding techs that can help me is tedious. Also all these new resources, I can't tell what improvements can be made until I move a worker onto of them or stumble through the civopedia, which really could use some cleaning up. Less backstory and more hard info with links on related game concepts would be nice.

The filter in the top left corner of the Tech Web is a pulldown which you can use to display only techs which can help with Health.

I don't think it's a great game, but it is quite fun. My problem is I am struggling to find the info I need with the changes from Civ V. For instance the tech tree has so much info and choices, it's a struggle to see what I need to research next. For instance my health is low, but finding techs that can help me is tedious. Also all these new resources, I can't tell what improvements can be made until I move a worker onto of them or stumble through the civopedia, which really could use some cleaning up. Less backstory and more hard info with links on related game concepts would be nice.

The game feels like it needs more work, like it needs to be hashed out a bit more. I am really looking forward to an expansion already, which is odd for a game that just came out.

I was also struggling to figure out what improvement I needed and what tech was necessary. But I discovered the filter pulldown on the Tech Web has an "Improvement" option. It's not ideal, but if you mouse over the resource you'll get a tooltip you can then go to the Tech Web and poke around with the "improvement" filter on (there aren't very many improvements, so it's not too hard to find what you need).